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Though opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko was officially declared the winner in Ukraine's third round of presidential elections late Monday, a representative for his competitor, Viktor Yanukovych, vowed to make an immediate appeal to the Supreme Court. Yanukovych's campaign manager alleged on Monday that a massive legal action was being prepared to prove widespread fraud in the re-runoff was responsible for the apparent victory of Yuschenko over Yanukovych. The Central Election Commission declared Yushchenko to be the winner on the basis of returns that showed him to have garnered 52 percent of the vote to just over 44 percent for Yanukovych.

The allegations of fraud received corroboration from Yossef Bodansky, Senior Editor of Global Information System. Bodansky, an election observer for all three rounds of the Ukrainian Presidential elections, filed a report in Monday's Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily and claims that his team of observers witnessed serious fraud in a mental hospital in Vinnytsya, 200 miles south of Kiev. Reports of comparable fraud at other hospitals were reported by Ukrainian, Russian and East European monitors. In the mental hospital in Vinnytsya, Bodansky reports, a list of patients eligible to vote had been drawn up three days prior to the election. Just a day before the election, after many hospitals had failed to produce a list of patients who had the mental capability to vote, lawyers for the Yushchenko camp persuaded the Ukrainian supreme court to rule that such a list deprived patients of the basic right to vote and thus that no list could be a precondition for voting. Consequently, individuals seeking to vote in the hospital did not need a voter's permit form, mailed in advance to the voter's residence, but could simply fill out a short form declaring their intention to vote in the hospital. Their names were then added to the list by hand, and no attempt was made to check if these voters had voted in the polling station associated with their primary residence. Bodansky writes that he witnessed a stream of people coming in from the street, filling out the form, and voting. The list of voters had well over 800 names by late morning, even though the hospital records showed only 400 patients. Bodansky claims that by the end of the day of polling, the number of voters in the "Orange counties" exceeded the head count of voters by about three percent. Since the regular stations reported no great discrepancies in the two counts, Bodansky concludes that the added votes came from the "extraordinary" stations, such as ones in hospitals like the one he visited in Vinnytsya.

Bodansky doubts that the alleged fraud accounted for the entire eight percent lead Yushchenko achieved. He thinks the remainder of Yushchenko's lead resulted from fatalism on the part of many Yanukovich voters who thought there was no point in resisting the pressure from the West. He cites a joke that was making the rounds on the eve of the election as evidence of widespread cynicism:

The Ukrainian Central Elections Committee requested several governments in
the West to assist in preparing the right kind of form for the polls. The US
State Department sent the following text: "Dear voter, You have to chose one of
the following two options: 1. Viktor Yushchenko is elected the next president of
Ukraine; or 2. There is going to be a fourth round of presidential elections."

Bodansky deplores the pressure Washington has exerted to secure a quick resolution in favor of Yushchenko. He reports that on December 28, the U.S. State Department "prodded" the Ukrainian courts "to uphold the re-run election victory" of Yushchenko. While sources say Washington will wait for the Supreme Court's ruling before formally congratulating Yushchenko, the Bush administration is plainly more interested in seeing Ukraine move away from Moscow's orbit than in a thorough investigation of the process that produced the favored result.

Labels: Defense and Foreign Affairs Daily, Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, Yossef Bodansky

Ukrainians return for a third time to vote in their Presidential elections tomorrow, December 26. Yossef Bodansky, Senior Editor, Global Information System, reports in Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily (December 24, 2004) on his observations as part of a team of election monitors in the first two rounds. Bodansky contends that the elections were free, fair, and legal (though, significantly, he does not mention the poisoning of Viktor Yushchenko). He sees the unprecedented move of repeating a Presidential election to be caused by the pressure of Western Europe and the United States, along with a pre-planned post-election propaganda war by the Yushchenko campaign. He notes that no one on his team saw anyone conducting exit polls in the second round, undermining the claims of the Yushchenko campaign that the results of these polls are evidence of fraud. On the subject of exit polls, see Which Side Attempted a Fraud in the Ukraine? for a discussion of an earlier story in Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily: "Extent of Soros-Linked Involvement Becoming Clear in Attempting to Seize Ukraine Elections for Yuschenko (December 3, 2004).

Bodansky is perplexed that the United States would side with the Western European support for Yuschenko's "coup attempt." He notes that Yuschenko, on the eve of the elections, gave assurances to the leaders of Germany, France and Spain that once elected he would immediately withdraw Ukrainian troops from Iraq. On the other hand, Viktor Yanukovich told Washington and Moscow that the Ukrainian contingent would not leave Iraq until the last U.S. troops left.

My guess is that U.S. statements of support for the "Orange Revolution" were initiated unilaterally by factions within the State Department that are dubious of, if not opposed to, the Bush Administration's Iraq policies. Continuing speculations about the source of the dioxin poisoning of Viktor Yushchenko prevent the Administration from any action other than awaiting the results of Sunday's third round of elections.

Labels: Defense and Foreign Affairs Daily, Global Information System, Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, Yossef Bodansky

Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily on Friday claims that Global Information System sources in the Ukraine have found a pattern of fraud and manipulation, traceable to groups supported by George Soros, in support of the opposition candidate, Viktor Yushchenko.

The evidence alleged by this report contradicts the generally accepted story in the West that electoral fraud of a massive scale was attempted in support of the candidacy of outgoing Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich.

GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs staff indicated that all of the alleged "exit poll" reporting during the second stage of the election, on November 21, 2004, was fabricated: there were, in fact, no exit polls allowed at the polling stations, so all the reporting claiming to have evidence based on the alleged overwhelming support in exit polls for Yuschenko was completely fabricated.

...Moreover, opinion polling nationwide during the run-up to the election showed that Prime Minister Yanukovich -- not European Union- and Soros-backed Yuschenko -- would win the election convincingly, but not surprisingly: Yanukovich's support base was the Ukrainian Orthodox Christian, Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox, and Russian communities, largely centered on the East of Ukraine, and these groups make up some 60 percent of the population. Yuschenko's supporters, the Uniates (Ukrainian Catholics) of Western Ukraine, constitute only some 40 percent of the population. The demographics -- and the close alignment of each population group to each candidate -- meant that a Yuschenko win would have been extremely unlikely, and the late public opinion polling in the week before the election confirmed this.

In the day or so before the election, a well-orchestrated team of Yuschenko supporters put in place their protest machinery, ready to denounce the election results.

...The monitors reported that, in fact, minor problems noted in the first round of the election had been scrupulously corrected by the second round, and that, by and large, there was not the widespread fraud which the Yuschenko team claimed.
["Extent of Soros-Linked Involvement Becoming Clear in Attempting to Seize Ukraine Elections for Yuschenko," Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily, December 3, 2004.]

Though the support of George Soros on one side of any political issue tempts me to take the other, I remain agnostic, for the time being, on the factual issues surrounding the polling in the Ukraine.

Labels: Defense and Foreign Affairs Daily, George Soros, Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko